Examining Intellectual Clout on A Taken Action

Abstract

Accounting area of research has encompassed ethical decision made by professional accountant as a result of escalating corporate scandals which exhibit the failure in accounting practice. Taking on Thorne’s and Rest’s ethical decision making process, this study aims to look over whether one’s ethical development clout is linear to his/her ethical behavior. Upon obtaining data through questionnaires, quantitative method is used to undertake a test over the data. The result suggests that individual’s degree of ethical development has no linear influence on his/her ethical behavior. One who knows the ideal solution to cope with an ethical issue, may not carry it out as his/her actual action. As education plays important role on this issue, educator really needs to specify the goal of having ethics taught.

Keywords: Ethical development, cognitive moral development, ethical character, ethics education